WHOLE FAMILY DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 172, 17 April 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHOLE FAMILY DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND

Yet They Keep House Alone

“I’m not looking forward to this,” I said to Mrs. Ellis, as we fought the rename wind up Wellington Stieet, Oakes, said Constance Waller, of Huddersfield, in an English journal recently. She looked at me shrewdly. “No.”. . t She knew what I was going to see. Mrs Ellis knocked at the door of No. 131 and we went in. A heavy curtain divided the little. lobby from the living room. She pulled this back. We saw three inen and a woman sitting at a table eating. "There they are, you see,” said Mrs. Ellis. "Now, what do you think of them? They look all right, don’t they?” 1 did not speak. I was dithering inside with horror at our behaviour. Yet I knew they were all deaf, dumb, and blind. , . Presently Herbert got up and felt hl's way round to the top of the cellar steps where’we could hear sizzling. He came back With a frying pan and emptied fried tomatoes on to his plate. He took the pan back, then tapped Leonard on the shoulder. Leonard gave him his hand, and Herbert tapped out a message on it. Then he took Amelia’s hand, and tapped a message mi that. He was smiling. They smiled. , , “He’s just said to ithem,” laughed Mrs . Ellis, “ ‘There, you see, you wouldn’t let me cook you tomatoes, but I've got them, and they smell good.’ ” All of them went on eating, and Mrs. Ellis kept on talking to me. Gradually I became convinced, as I had known all along, that they had no idea we were there.'

Mrs. Ellis picked up Amelia’s hand and told her we were there. Amelia’s sweet face shone, a welcome. She tapped out the news to Leonard. Excitedly he tapped it out to Harry. Harry came round and tried to talk to Amelia, whose fingers were engrossed in chattering to Mrs. Ellis. lit their excitement they forgot about Herbert, and Herbert went ou drinking his tea, unaware that the room was sparkling with the thrill of visitors.

These three brothers and sister, and a fourth brother who was out at work, are deaf, dumb and blind. They live together in a three-roomed back-to-back bouse and look after themselves entirely.

They were born deaf and dumb. Their blindness came on later, Harry’s at twenty-one, Amelia’s at twentyeight, the others —which makes them mo''“ ’'-"gic—later.

llerocTl, who is fifty-four, had to give up bis shoe-repairing only eight years ago. In his youth he wanted to be a carpet designer, but he could find no one to teach the deaf and dumb boy. So his father piif him 'to shoe repairing.

He grew to love that because it was work. He feels a constant agony of frustration because be can- no longer do it.

Even with his hands he has the power

of words, because before he went blind he used to give talks to the members of the Deaf and Dumb Institute, and they loved them. Since he became blind he will not go to the institute. He hates people to know that he is blind. He refuses to have a white stick. They all do.

So they keep getting knocked down by traffic. Last time Herbert was taken to the infirmary he bad a double fracture of I lie leg". Ewart, the youngest, aged thirty-nine, works in Halifax as a basket maker. He has to take the bus to Halifax, change to another bus, and at night come back the same way. Often he is late home because buses have come and gone without his knowing. He will not tell anyone he is helpless. They will not have a fireguard in the house. They say a fireguard is a childish thing. “Amelia wants to show you the bedrooms,” said Mrs. Ellis. I followed her upstairs, and she showed me the room with the double bed and single bed where three of 'the brothers sleep, then her own room. Both were spotlessly clean and neat, with bright eiderdowns. She does all the housework, washes, irons—her casements . are clear white and perfectly ironed —and gets up at six every morning to get Ewart off to work. When she has itime she knits yards of lace to give away. Amelia cleared away the tea things to the sink-in-a-cupboard which is the kitchen of Huddersfield back-to-back houses.

Leonard lit the gas. There was no shade on the fragile mantle, but it was unbroken. I don’t know how they knew it was growing dusk. He drew the heavy plush curtains. “Ask Herbert,” I said, “what enjoyment he gets out of life.” She asked him. His fine face set in its lines of suffering.

“I enjoy nothing since I became blind,” he said. “Ask him,” I said, “why he goes on living. What is he hoping for?” “I am hoping for nothing but Eternity.” I don’t know quite how we got round to it, but from talking of Herbert’s loss of his trade I asked, him what kept him going. “Christianity,” he said. “Do you mean,” I said, “that you believe in God—in a good God?” “Yes,” he said. “What evidence have you that God is good?” “Who looks after us? Who gives us”—lie pointed to the window —“the sunshine, the fresh air, the smell of the fields?”

The only thing they ask is to go for walks in the fresh air, and that they daren’t do without risking their lives unless someone will take them. In the mornings, when Amelia is cleaning, they go and walk up and down the bit of grass at the front of the bouses. Ouce a week Toe H men take Harry to the institute and back.